110-year-old Tolland woman recalls 9 decades of voting

When you're 110, memories are fuzzy. But Irma Schmidt's clear blue eyes light up when she describes the first time she voted 88 years ago.

Schmidt remembers marching to her hometown fire station in Ohio with her grandmother, mother and aunt to proudly cast their first votes for the state's favorite son, Republican presidential candidate Warren G. Harding.

Schmidt, who now lives in Tolland, says she hasn't missed a November election since.

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, who honored Schmidt in 2005 for being one of the oldest living women in Connecticut to have cast a ballot in 1920, the first year of full voting rights for women, believes Schmidt is the oldest living active voter in Connecticut. Gertrude Noone, a 109-year-old from Milford, is close behind.

During a recent interview at Woodlake at Tolland, the nursing home where she has lived since 2004, Schmidt remembers voting for Harding and for Franklin D. Roosevelt, but can't recall after that.

A longtime unaffiliated voter, Schmidt told The Hartford Courant 10 years ago that she had voted for Truman, Kennedy, Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Bysiewicz recalls Schmidt saying that she voted for John Kerry in 2004.

It's unclear whether Schmidt will vote for president for a 23rd time. The nursing home staff says she joins them with the morning paper and talks about the news every day. But Schmidt couldn't answer when asked if she'd vote this year.

Schmidt raised a family in New Brunswick, N.J., with her husband, George Schmidt, a political scientist and historian at Douglass College, the women's college at Rutgers. Irma Schmidt taught school during World War II and for decades taught piano in their home.

"All those recitals," Schmidt remembered.

Her daughter, Marianne Simonoff of Tolland, recalls the lively political discussions that filled their home.

"My father was the political scientist. She felt it was a duty to vote," Simonoff, 81, said.

Remarkably, there are 1,730 registered voters in Connecticut who are over 100 years old, Bysiewicz said. The state allows supervised voting of elderly and disabled residents in nursing homes as long as registrars from both major political parties are present to make sure there is no improper influence over the elderly voters.

Bysiewicz recalls being charmed in 2005 by Schmidt's smile and sharp wit.

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